Grand Valley State University’s Student Senate has approved a new travel fund, open to all student organizations, as a part of its 2012-13 base budget proposal, the rest of which senators will vote on today at 4:30 p.m. in Pere Marquette during the Student Senate General Assembly meeting.

“In the past, academic and honorary groups weren’t eligible for funds, they had to go through a separate academic conference fund, which is outside of our scope,” said Dave Pacini, vice president of finance for GVSU’s Student Senate. “… So this year we’re opening up to everyone.”

The designated $50,000 travel fund will be distributed evenly on a quarter system – July to September, October to December, January to March and April to June.

Requests, which must be submitted at least four weeks prior to the trip, will be considered and subsequently awarded by the Student Senate Appropriations Committee on a rolling basis, as funds are available.

Pacini said the travel fund, though open to a number of organization classifications, is something geared more specifically toward academic, professional and honorary groups, who had to jump through more hoops in previous years to acquire money for group trips.

“The travel fund is brand new, it’s something that I feel like, especially academic and honorary groups have been pushing for, for a while,” Pacini said. “We heard their feedback and are establishing this travel fund to better meet their needs.”

Among other notable changes in the 2012-13 base budget proposal, which council allocation sub total tops off at $807,000, is the shifting of allocation as a result of a reclassification of student groups GVSU’s Office of Student Life enacted over the summer.

So, though the Cultural Council saw a 20 percent decrease at $60,000 (down from $75,000 in the 2011-2012 base budget), the reclassification of some of those groups to the Special Interest Council is attributed to the decline in allocation.

“We’re going to have a large portion of our budget left over because the reclassification happened over the summer after we set the budget for last year, so we’re trying to match the movement of funds with the movement of groups,” Pacini said.

Student Senate itself saw a nearly 22 percent decrease in their operating budget, jumping down from $32,000 to $25,000 in this year’s proposal.

“We’re trying to cut back or own operating budget — for Senate and the various things we’ve done — we’re trying to cut back our own stuff, so we’ve given ourselves a 22 percent decrease on our own funding,” Pacini said. “…To be more fiscally responsible as budgets are getting tighter and tighter.”

If Student Senate passes the base budget, the Service and Advocacy Council will see an $8,000, 25-percent increase from last years’ budget, totaling at $40,000. Spotlight Productions, the group that brings Homecoming performers and events like Last Laker Standing to GVSU totals out at $135,000, a $15,000, 12.5-percent increase from last year’s allocation.

“Our philosophy on council budgets is that we’d rather keep them at a level we feel like they will spend with the option to come back to the reserve account and replenish that,” Pacini said. “Let’s say we gave the cultural groups ‘x’ dollars, but if they don’t spend that, it’s not available to anyone else and it’s just sitting in the cultural account and we can’t touch it. We’d rather under-estimate than over-estimate, because then we’re tying up money rather than just giving them additional funding if they come back to us later.”

Pacini said allocations are decided on an event basis by Student Senate’s funding board, which is composed of five members from each individual council from five different disciplines that fall under that group; for example, a Biology Club member and a Law Society member.

“We feel like by letting the students who are in those groups decide on what is appropriate, we’ll better estimate their needs than someone who is not familiar with that type of programming,” he said.

After groups submit a request through Stuey, the board will meet with them to talk about why their group is beneficial to campus, go through each individual expense they’ve specified on the request and ask questions for clarification before making a decision on what they deem is the appropriate allocation.

“I know that the finance committee has worked extremely hard on the budget and put a lot of work into making sure that each council has the money that they need for the up coming year,” said Nick Ryder, Student Senate’s vice president for public relations.

The Student Senate will hold their General Assembly meeting today at 4:30 p.m. on the second floor of the Kirkhof Center in the Pere Marquette room.

To view the base budget proposal online, visit www.gvsu.edu/studentsenate.

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